dbread @dbread@qoto.org

XZ Utils Review Notes

Link: https://tukaani.org/xz-backdoor/review.html
Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40044243

A friend has just suggested I turn on a humidifier and a dehumidifier to wirelessly transfer water.

AI cannot exist without stealing

“The only practical way for these tools to exist is if they can be trained on massive amounts of data without having to license that data,” Sy Damle, a lawyer who represents Andreessen Horowitz, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm, said of A.I. models last year in a public discussion about copyright law. “The data needed is so massive that even collective licensing really can’t work.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/06/technology/tech-giants-harvest-data-artificial-intelligence.html?unlocked_article_code=1.i00.8P1o.ArdmHhNbUNbm&smid=url-share

🇦🇹 #Austria faces its biggest espionage scandal in decades as the arrest of a former intelligence officer brings to light evidence of extensive Russian infiltration, lax official oversight and behavior worthy of a spy novel.

https://apnews.com/article/austria-spying-scandal-russia-ott-marsalek-wirecard-8921f3ce95b30646ee1952bf8949a43f

#russia #spying

Oh, wow.

@eniko please don't take this the wrong way, but:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation#Google

it's the definition of loyal opposition-- google literally props up mozilla to look like competition so that they won't be called a monopoly. i'm not sure using mozilla hurts google in any way, or brings us any closer to multiple browser engines-- they literally bankroll firefox for us to feel like we have a choice, and for journos to sound crazy when they talk about it.

so google spied on its users in incognito mode AND sold the information off, and they're planning to kill adblockers, and people still won't use firefox. ridiculous

This week’s show is up and it’s an absolute cracker… features a chat with @AndresFreundTec about his discovery of the xz backdoor, then @metlstorm and I take a look at the CSRB report on Microsoft.

Get it wherever u get your podcasts… except for Apple Podcasts bc it takes forever to arrive there 🤷🏼‍♂️

my take on Gemini, Gopher, et. al.: just write HTML and mostly stick to features in HTML 2.0 as described in the RFCs (1866, 1867, 1942, 1980 (OK you can probably skip this one, imagemaps were always silly and questionable for accessibility), and 2070.)

don’t like the proliferation of JavaScript on the modern web? nobody’s forcing you to put a <script> tag in, just don’t write one. don’t like the crimes that can be committed with CSS, and believe that stylesheets should be the user’s choice, not yours? nobody’s forcing you to put a <link rel="stylesheet"> in.

you can even use good HTML5 features like srcset, and just stick to features present HTML2 otherwise, old browsers will just ignore it. follow design guides from before the Web 2.0 era, where your website was supposed to “gracefully degrade” - don’t require new features if you use them, and then the most potato of browsers can access your site.

and, sure, those potato browsers can’t access the rest of the modern web, but they can easily access sites of people who follow these guidelines… and so can modern browsers.

IMO, be the change that you want to see in the world that everyone actually uses, instead of creating your own world that will always be a tiny niche.

(refined version of a take in reply to someone else’s private thread, written for public consumption)

What I really like about #GNOME46 is that it turned out to be a really good release for old and low-end devices. One of my test devices is Thinkpad T400. That hardware is over 15 years old and is has actually got faster over the last few years - especially this release.

One of my favorite improvements here, headed by Christian Hergert, was the boost to VTE. Terminals using #gtk4 are now much faster and responsive. I mean, damn, even switching tabs doesn't trigger a full redraw!

#gnome